Jeromie Whalen, the left-wing teacher mounting a primary challenge against 18-term Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, has a criminal history that includes a drunken hospital fight, a noise-violation arrest, and a DUI car crash, all surfacing weeks before the Sept. 1 vote.
Police records obtained by the New York Post show that Whalen, now 39, was arrested for misdemeanor battery in Osceola County, Florida, in 2006 after he allegedly assaulted a security guard while drunk in a hospital emergency room. He had been resisting nurses who tried to insert an IV. A mug shot from the arrest shows Whalen grinning at the police station. Prosecutors ultimately did not pursue the case.
Three years later, in 2009, Amherst, Massachusetts, police arrested Whalen at a house party on a noise violation. Officers reported being met with "uncooperative and rude" backtalk, with Whalen insisting they needed a warrant to enter the premises while guests played beer pong inside. He received a $100 citation. In court, Whalen says, a judge told him to "keep it down" and sent him on his way.
Then came the most serious incident. In 2010, when Whalen was 23, he crashed his Mazda pickup truck into the bushes ten feet from an Amherst home at 4:07 a.m. A police diagram showed the vehicle swerving off the road, narrowly missing a telephone pole, and snapping its front axle as it careened toward the house. Whalen later confirmed on Facebook that he was charged with driving under the influence, lost his driver's license, and was required to take classes.
When the Post confronted Whalen on Friday, he did not deny the arrests. He did, however, try to reframe them, and raise questions about how the records came to light.
Whalen told the Post:
"I'm not going to say that I haven't made mistakes in my life, but I've learned from mistakes that I had in my younger years."
He blamed his early run-ins with the law on "newfound independence and alcohol" when he got to college. On the 2006 ER arrest, he described the incident as "refusing services" and said there were "two sides" to the story. He recalled officers telling him they would take him to jail if he tried to leave the hospital.
On the 2010 crash, Whalen was less forthcoming during the Friday interview, saying only, "I can't remember all of the things that happened." By Saturday night, however, he posted on Facebook confirming the DUI charge, the license suspension, and the required classes.
Whalen also went on offense, alleging the records had been improperly released:
"What you've been given is probably illegal. It's been so long, [the records] have been sealed, and so you were given illegal documents. And that's going to be something that's really important moving forward."
An unnamed source who provided the records to the Post said they "raise significant questions about Whalen's conduct, judgment and temperament." Whether the records are in fact legally sealed, and under what authority, remains unclear. Whalen has not taken any formal legal action over their release, based on available reporting from the Post.
The arrest record surfaces at a politically volatile moment for House Democrats. Whalen is not some fringe gadfly. Our Revolution, the political organization formed to continue the mission of Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign, endorsed him on Thursday. He has drawn profiles from Politico and NOTUS. A local TV debate on WWLP against Neal is scheduled for Wednesday.
Whalen's platform sits well to Neal's left. He backs a $15 federal minimum wage and has hammered the 77-year-old incumbent for taking corporate donations. In his interview with the Post, he laid out the attack directly:
"You can't fight for lower utility rates when you're taking money from Eversource. You can't advocate for affordable housing when Blackstone, the world's largest landlord, is one of your biggest donors. You can't fight for actual health of individuals with lower drug prescriptions when you have money rolling in from Pfizer."
He also accused Neal of being "s***-scared" about losing the primary after 18 terms in office. "The congressman waited too long. He didn't take any of our challenge seriously," Whalen told the Post.
Neal, who has represented western Massachusetts since 1989 and is described as a centrist institutionalist in policy and style, did not respond to the Post's request for comment. His preference for a gradual approach to issues like health insurance reform, and a widely noted habit during the pandemic of wearing his COVID-19 mask around his neck rather than on his face, have made him a target for progressive activists eager to replace old-guard Democrats with ideological allies.
Whalen's challenge fits a pattern. Seven House Democrats have already lost primaries to challengers this year. Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat of New York, Diana DeGette of Colorado, John Larson of Connecticut, Al Green and Julie Johnson of Texas, and Shri Thanedar of Michigan all fell. The ouster of Thanedar in Michigan by a Democratic Socialists of America-backed opponent underscored just how far left the party's activist base has moved.
On Tuesday, the trend continued in Florida, where more centrist Trump impeachment witness Alex Vindman lost the state's Senate primary to DSA-endorsed state Rep. Angie Nixon by more than 12 points, despite Vindman possessing far more campaign cash. That result mirrored a similar upset in Colorado, where a DSA-backed challenger toppled a 30-year incumbent earlier this cycle.
The common thread is clear: the Democratic Party's progressive wing is systematically targeting its own establishment figures, funding challengers who run on platforms well to the left of the incumbents they aim to replace. Whalen fits the mold precisely, a young, Sanders-aligned activist challenging a septuagenarian committee veteran.
But most of those successful challengers did not carry a rap sheet into the race. Whalen does. And his response, a mix of contrition, deflection, and conspiracy about illegally leaked records, raises a fair question about whether voters in western Massachusetts are getting a full picture of the man asking for their trust.
When politicians face legal scrutiny, the response often matters as much as the underlying conduct. Louisiana's attorney general recently saw a criminal case halted over procedural defects, a reminder that the process surrounding charges can be as contested as the charges themselves. Whalen's claim that sealed records were illegally provided to the press follows a similar instinct, shift the focus from the conduct to the disclosure.
Whether that strategy works with voters is another matter. Whalen told the Post he has spent the years since his last arrest building a record of community service as a high school journalism teacher:
"How do you make up for your mistakes?... You improve yourself and you improve the lives around you. And I think that if you actually look at my track record from that age of 23 to 39, I've done a lot of good in the community."
He also insisted his approach to governance would be collaborative. "I'm very much in favor of working together to get the job done," he said.
The Democratic left's strategy of primarying its own incumbents has reshaped the party's internal politics in ways that extend far beyond any single district. But the pattern raises a recurring question: what kind of candidates does that strategy actually produce?
In Whalen's case, voters now have a fuller picture. A college-aged arrest for allegedly assaulting a hospital security guard while drunk. A noise-violation bust at a beer-pong party. A 4 a.m. DUI crash that nearly sent a pickup truck into someone's home. And a candidate who, when pressed, first said he couldn't remember the details, then confirmed them on Facebook hours later.
Neal's campaign has said nothing publicly. The 77-year-old incumbent may not need to. Democrats elsewhere have learned that a candidate's past conduct, once exposed, can reshape a race overnight, no matter how much institutional backing that candidate carries.
Whalen wants voters to judge him on who he is now, not who he was at 23. Fair enough. But a man asking to represent half a million people in Congress ought to be able to answer a straight question about his own DUI without needing a day and a Facebook post to get there.
